Teleradiology is a means of electronically transmitting radiographic patient images and consultative text from one location to another. It is commonly employed when the equipment and personnel for recording the radiographic image are located in one location, and the expert in radiological image analysis, the radiologist, is situated in a remote location. Different connection configurations exist in the art, which are elaborated below.
In a point-to-point connection system, the recorded images are transmitted from a sending station together with the relevant associated data, to a remote receiving station. A radiologist views the images and associated data at the receiving station and generates a report. The report is sent back to the required location, be it to the originator of the request or to the referring clinician. The referring clinician can be located proximal to the sending station e.g. in the same hospital where the image was taken, or elsewhere. The point to point access relies the sending party finding a reliable receiving party which can provide a quality analysis within a requested timeframe for a reasonable cost. The receiving party must be able to cope with urgent or a large quantity of requests, and yet must avoid running at overcapacity during times of routine workloads.
Another model is where several sending stations each with a different location, for example, in different hospitals or imaging centers, are linked to a single receiving station which is a teleradiology group. Teleradiology group employs radiologists to analyse images and prepare reports. The completed reports are sent back to the required location, be it to the originator of the request or to the referring clinician. The teleradiology group provides the analysis service by recruiting radiologists according to their training and expertise. A higher premium is paid for such service because the costs of administering the teleradiology group (e.g. infrastructure, radiologist recruitment, image distribution, quality control, promotion) in addition to the radiologist fees must be met.
A further defined model to the teleradiology group is the teleradiology hub, where several sending stations each with a different location, for example, in different hospitals or imaging centers, are linked to a single receiving station which is a teleradiology hub. The Teleradiology hub may employ a local team of radiologists as in the teleradiology model, but may also distribute the images remotely for analysis to radiologists who may be experts or specialists in particularly defined field. The specialisation can be so narrow and infrequently required that it is not available in the vicinity of the hub. The costs to the client of a service provided by a Teleradiology hub are comparatively high, and the hub must still locate reliable and reasonably-priced specialist radiologists, within a specified timeframe.
The problem posed in the art by teleradiology is how to achieve flexibility, quality and cost effectiveness. The separate methods of the art do not all provide a system that can manage high and low demand, urgent and routine requests, specialist analyses, reliable and quality radiologists, all for a reasonable cost. The aim of the present invention is a method and system for radiological analyses that overcomes the problems of the prior art.